The Last Supper (26 page)

All this, and a good deal more, Wolkowicz knew. His full-field investigation of Jocelyn had turned up many facts. The microphones he had planted in her apartment gave him a glimpse of the inside
of Jocelyn’s mind and heart, because she had the habit of talking to herself—or, rather, to an imaginary friend. When she was all alone in her apartment, especially if she had had a
secret drink or two, Jocelyn would pour out her heart to the empty air, exactly as if she were confiding in an old and trusted friend. Wolkowicz’s listening devices heard everything she
said.

The Armenian Jocelyn loved, Mordecai Bashian, was her supervisor at the Bureau of Labor Standards. Jocelyn’s jolly manner and her pretty clothes, when she reported for duty, did not
impress Bashian. He seemed to take an immediate dislike to her, a new experience for Jocelyn, who had been teased and petted by males all her life. At twenty-one, she was flirtatious, but she was
sexually innocent, unless you count, as Jocelyn did not, an occasional game of mousy-mousy. Mordecai Bashian seemed to be offended by her femininity. He loaded her with dull paperwork, document
after document written in stuffy bureaucratic language she could hardly understand, and he made her stay in the office deep into the night, typing, so that whatever silly report he had demanded
would be on his desk when he came in in the morning. Tears fell onto the spongy mimeograph paper as Jocelyn typed away in her little island of electric light with the dark hushed city all around
her.

After months of this torture (her boss never seemed to read her work, certainly he never commented on it) Mordecai Bashian came into Jocelyn’s office one evening, took her
camel’s-hair polo coat off its hanger, and threw it onto her desk, sending documents flying. “Come on, let’s go to dinner,” he said. Surprised into agreeing, Jocelyn got
into a cab with him and went to an Italian restaurant in a cellar, way down on Maine Avenue, by the Potomac.

Jocelyn had never thought of Mordecai Bashian as being good-looking; he was swarthy and long-nosed and he slouched. He never smiled. He spoke in a hard monotone; there were no masculine ripples
in his voice—no humor, no undertone of teasing. But in the smoky light of the Italian restaurant Bashian looked quite different. The waiters knew him. He laughed and joked with them and
ordered veal parmigiana and a bottle of Chianti. Somebody was playing a concertina in the next room. Jocelyn had never eaten real Italian food before. The wine bottle in its basket, the crusty veal
with its rubbery slab of strange white cheese covered with tomato sauce (Bashian even knew the name of the cheese), the waxy smell from all the candles guttering in the necks of bottles, the
lilting notes of the concertina—the atmosphere hypnotized Jocelyn. Also, she drank a lot of sour red wine; Bashian kept filling her glass from the enormous bottle. All the while, he talked to
her steadily, staring at her. His dark brown eyes were like the eyes of a Negro except that Bashian’s eyes were unkind.

Mordecai Bashian talked about Negroes. He seemed to know an entirely different type of darky from the ones Jocelyn had grown up with in Virginia. Her stories about her mammy and the pickaninny
playmates of her childhood infuriated Bashian. “Pickaninnies?” he said. “
Pickaninnies!
Those pickaninnies are going to smear the blood of people like you all over the pages
of history.” Bashian grinned sardonically, the first sign of humor she had ever detected on his face, when Jocelyn recoiled at these words. “Afraid?” he said. “You’d
better
be afraid.” But Jocelyn was not afraid of Negroes; she was shocked that Bashian could even imagine that the fine colored people she had known all her life could be capable of
such horrors. She told him how much she loved her family’s Negroes and how much those Negroes loved her family. “Don’t you smirk at me, Mordecai Bashian,” Jocelyn cried as
another nasty smile twisted his lips. “I don’t know what a smart-mouth Jew from New York City thinks he knows about my mammy!”

At that, Bashian rose from his chair, the brownish skin of his face turning red. “So you’re a dirty little anti-Semite too,” he said. “It so happens I’m an
Armenian. I don’t suppose you know what that is, do you?” He stamped out of the restaurant. Jocelyn, who had never known that a man could be insulted by anything a girl said to him,
tried to run after Mordecai Bashian to apologize, but the waiters stopped her and made her pay the bill, which amounted to almost four dollars.

When Jocelyn did get outside, there was no sign of Mordecai Bashian. The street was empty. A fog had come in, hiding all but the masts of the boats that lay at anchor in the river. It was
spooky: all was silence except the hulls of the boats squeaking as they rolled in the tide or the current or whatever made them move. Jocelyn drew on her gloves (she never felt fully dressed
without gloves). There were no taxis in sight. Jocelyn had never been in a situation in which there was no one there to take care of her. Her bosom filled up with tears, as it always did when her
feelings had been hurt really badly. She sniffled. Then, deciding to make the best of things, she walked bravely into the wall of fog.

Jocelyn didn’t know exactly where she was. She didn’t really know Washington very well; she was always getting turned around. This old street was paved with stones and her heel went
into a crack and she turned her ankle. She remembered the wounding, nasty words Mordecai Bashian had spoken to her. She began to cry in earnest. The fog was thickening by the minute; she could
barely make out the shapes of buildings only a few feet away. Presently Jocelyn arrived at the Fourteenth Street bridge. She thought she knew where she was and hurried on. Then, with a leap of the
heart, she heard a man cough, a frightening noise distorted by the fog. Jocelyn quickened her step. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a shape moving in the mist. She was sure it was the
coughing man. He was following her. She could hear his cough.

There wasn’t a soul in sight. Jocelyn could see streetlights on the bridge, gauzy in the fog, but she heard no sound at all—not a car, not a voice. Jocelyn’s stomach knotted.
She had a stitch in her side. She couldn’t get the sound of the man’s footsteps out of her ears. It was March, a chilly night. The bare skin on Jocelyn’s thighs between the tops
of her stockings and the bottom of her girdle suddenly felt cold. It seemed wrong to run, but nevertheless she broke into a trot. Her heavy breasts jounced in her brassiere, her ankles kept turning
in the high-heeled shoes. The silk of her undergarments whispered against the lining of her dress, a feminine noise that always before had given her pleasure but now sounded like the sibilant voice
of her rapist, calling to her out of the fog.

Suddenly a strong, angry male hand seized her arm, dragging her to a halt. Jocelyn opened her mouth to scream but no sound came out. “Slow down, for Christ’s sake,” Mordecai
Bashian said. “Oh, Mordecai, thank God it’s you!” Jocelyn cried in gratitude.

Mordecai led her away from the river. They walked together in the fog along the Mall, all the way from the Washington Monument to the Lincoln Memorial, then across the bridge to the Jefferson
Memorial. Jocelyn held on to Mordecai’s arm with her gloved hand. He was much gentler now. He told her about his childhood in a tenement in New York, about his father who sent his sons to
CCNY by selling things that nobody wanted—pots and pans, books of knowledge—from door to door. Mordecai described human suffering the like of which Jocelyn had never imagined. At home,
when as a child Jocelyn did not eat her dinner, her mother would say, “The starving Armenians would be glad to have those carrots.” Mordecai’s family
were
the starving
Armenians; his grandparents, his uncles and aunts, his cousins had been driven into the desert by the Turks. All had died. “America would do nothing. What does Christian civilization care
about the murder of two million Armenians?” Mordecai said. “Was there outrage in your stately Virginia mansion because my grandmother was dropping in her tracks from lack of water,
because my uncles were being flogged to death, because my cousins were being raped and bayoneted by the Turks?” Mordecai tapped his bony chest. “There is outrage in here, but what can a
white girl like you know about that?” he said contemptuously.

It was a terrible thing to be a member of the downtrodden classes. Until just then, strolling along beside the Reflecting Pool with Mordecai Bashian, Jocelyn had never truly understood that. She
had hurt Mordecai with her mean words about his being a smart-mouth New York Jew, even though he wasn’t Jewish. And, as he explained, she had hurt him, too, by just being what she was: a
pretty, well-to-do, joking girl with a state supreme court justice for a father. That was why Mordecai had been so unkind, because Jocelyn was unattainable. He kept on calling her a “white
girl,” as if, in some sardonic sense that she could never understand, he was colored.

Mordecai led her into the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial. Fog draped the brooding statue of Thomas Jefferson like a toga. It was awfully picturesque and romantic. Mordecai’s face was
really a kind and sensitive face. A lock of black hair had fallen over his forehead. Jocelyn reached up and pushed it back. She gave him a sweet smile, and then on a generous impulse she kissed
him, a warm soft pressure right on his lips, to show that she forgave him and knew that he forgave her.

Mordecai kissed her back, very sweetly, arid pulled her to him. Chastely, Jocelyn let herself be kissed, as she had learned, arms hanging loose at sides, eyes shut, lips soft but firmly
together. When Mordecai stopped, she opened her eyes and smiled. He put his arm around her and they walked outside. Mordecai led her down toward the Tidal Basin. She assumed that that was the way
home.

They were inside a grove of trees. The fog was so thick that they had to grope their way among the trunks with their hands outstretched before them. It was like being in the dark in a haunted
house. Jocelyn shivered and giggled. Mordecai pulled her to him again and kissed her. What harm can this do? she thought. She knew how to handle amorous boys. Mordecai smelled different from the
other men she’d kissed, more pungent; she wondered if it was because he was an Armenian. Again she shivered a little. Mordecai took her lower lip between his lips and gave it delicious little
kisses, a new way of doing things in Jocelyn’s experience. She was aware of his body. He stepped back, untied the belt of her coat, and put his arms around her inside the coat. His hands
caressed her back. He touched her breasts. “No,” Jocelyn said. But Mordecai didn’t stop, the way the boys from Washington & Lee most always did. He licked her ear and kissed
her neck. She supposed he was swelling up, though she couldn’t tell through the armor of her girdle. “Come on,” Mordecai said, drawing her under a big tree. “No,”
Jocelyn said, “I think we’d better go.” Mordecai uttered a sigh of wounded despair, and Jocelyn realized that he thought once again that she was rejecting him because he was
Armenian. She couldn’t see his face; they were hidden from each other in the fog. Jocelyn sank to the ground with her back against the trunk of the tree.

Mordecai caressed her breasts. He unbuttoned her blouse and unfastened her bra. Jocelyn had permitted this to happen a time or two before; she was proud of her breasts. Mordecai touched them
with his tongue. Jocelyn struggled, then relaxed and let him do it; it was dreamy and warm to be caressed as she gazed into the fog that hid them like a cloud of white tulle. Jocelyn felt wetness
between her thighs. Now it really was time to go. But Mordecai wouldn’t let her leave. He put his face very close to hers. The tenderness she had detected earlier was mixed now with a
petulant, hard selfishness. She was moved by the way he looked; she was a little frightened, but moved. His hands were under her skirt. This was the first time she had ever permitted this. Mordecai
unhooked her garters and caressed the insides of her thighs. He removed her pantaloons, and then, as she found herself raising her hips to make things easier, he peeled off her girdle. When
Mordecai removed her petticoat and her skirt she didn’t resist.

Naked, she lay on her outspread polo coat with her arms at her sides, accepting his hands and his fingers and his lips and tongue. He kissed her body all over. She felt something happening. He
was kissing her mouse! She leaped in astonishment and tried to scoot away over the whistling silk lining of her coat, but Mordecai had hold of her buttocks and he followed her with his quick
tongue.

Jocelyn stopped trying to escape. A great shuddering sensation seized her. She buried her hands in Mordecai’s thick hair, loving the coarseness of it and imagining how dark it was, and
then she wrapped her legs around his neck. She had a long, sweet orgasm like a whisper that ran from her toes to her crown, and felt that her bones, her skin, her hair, and the blue veins inside
her body were all one thing. As she lay on her polo coat, dazed by pleasure, Mordecai lifted his head. She kissed him in gratitude on the cheek. He thrust his tongue into her mouth. She expected to
retch, but when she tasted herself on the tongue of a man she clutched Mordecai’s head again and began to use her own tongue. She felt something. She knew what it was, yet she was amazed by
it: she had always imagined that it would be like a bone, cold and sharp, but it was a lovely, smooth, limber muscle that slid into her, reaching and reaching. She wept. “Move your
ass!” Mordecai said. He showed her the rhythm, pulling her toward him with hands locked on either buttock. She whirled like a person going under ether into a blackness, her whole being
swelling inside her glowing skin.

After that, Jocelyn naturally considered that she was Mordecai’s wife. But when she spoke of marriage, his face grew black with disgust. “Get this,” he said.
“I’ll
never
marry you. But I will make an honest woman of you. I’ll teach you how to think.”

Mordecai was the smartest person Jocelyn had ever known. He insisted that she believe every single thing that he believed. In a way, Mordecai reminded Jocelyn of her mother: like her mother, he
had no doubts about anything. He
knew
what to wear, what to say, what to believe, what to despise, and he could not bear to be in the room (could not bear to be in the same world, if truth
were told) with any outsider who didn’t have the right clothes, words, beliefs, and taboos.